“The way the IBA was shut down is neither fair or honorable,” Netanyahu said in a statement Wednesday, using the passive voice in a statement about a process he had initiated. A consensus that the public broadcasting authority needed to be reformed broke down among parties angling for political influence and cost savings.
For many Israelis, Channel 1 was like army reserves duty: It was a necessary evil you were supposed to tolerate, something OK to hate. But secretly, you occasionally longed for it, the way you longed for the surprising joys of watery yogurt and hard-boiled eggs. Channel 1 offered camaraderie and, above all, purpose.
Channel 1, like the 40 days a year you spent in fatigues, surrounded you with less beautiful but reassuringly familiar faces who shared a mission: making Israel a better and more secure place.
It was virtuous to a fault. Israelis bought color TVs when they became available in the late 1970s, but only so they could fully enjoy Jordan TV. Israel TV lacked the technology to broadcast color, or so we were told.
Except it did have the technology. One Friday night circa 1979 or 1980 at the launch of the weekly movie — a 1950s Western — a technician forgot to turn on the switch that washed out the color.
It was corrected to a black-and-white wash within minutes, but the secret was out and it was infuriating: We had been under the impression that Israel’s government-run broadcaster couldn’t afford color TV. But not only could the government afford it, it was actually paying extra money for technology that could keep everything black and white.
If the reasoning IBA eventually proffered was perverse, it was perverse in a way that made sense in a country just emerging from socialism: We are austere. We are serious. We can’t afford to pretend that we can afford it.
